novelraw Chapter 158 : Chapter 158
Chapter 158 : Chapter 158
Chapter 158: Reporter’s Sense
“Oh my, so cute! Look at this one. Is it a stray?”
“The fur is so clean. Look at that shine. Does it not have an owner?”
Two women walking down the street stopped in their tracks and made a fuss.
Where their gazes landed, I was trudging along the asphalt with a sullen expression.
Humans I ran into after crawling out of the ventilation duct and leaving the alley.
Before I could avoid them, the two had already fallen for me and naturally reached out their hands.
“Are you looking for your sister or brother? Did you get lost?”
“Nyak!”
Sister, brother? I am a guy. A male!
I snapped irritably for a moment, then—
‘……Or am I?’
An uneasy feeling struck me, and I discreetly checked.
There were no nuts.
Instead, there was a surgical scar.
It felt strangely hollow.
Something that should have been there was not.
‘So the correct answer is… I was male.’
A heavy wave of reality hit me out of nowhere.
The moment I became aware of it, the sense of loss from the cat I was mimicking seemed to seep into me as well.
I was neutered. Even if it was Mimicry, it did not feel great.
“Oof, I think it is angry. It hissed. Sorry~”
“Do you have any food? Like Churu or something?”
“Let us take pictures first. I am posting this to my story. It is insanely cute.”
Whether I was angry or not, the women took photos, selfies, videos—absolute chaos.
‘Humans, honestly.’
I shook my head and slipped between the two of them.
“……Hey, did you just see that?”
“What?”
“Did that cat just shake its head like a person? Like it was pitying us.”
“You must have imagined it. A cat doing that?”
“Damn it, I should have filmed it.”
Their baffled voices hit my back, but I walked on with my tail held high.
The rendezvous point was an officetel about two kilometers away from the pet shop.
I picked up my pace along the sidewalk.
I could not release Mimicry right now.
I would turn into a rough-looking thug on the spot.
Even taking off Edward’s Human Skin Mask and walking around as my real face would still be risky.
‘The time limit…… it is making me nervous.’
Anxiety crept in.
After walking for quite a while, with about five hundred meters left, it happened just as I feared.
A strange sensation came from my front paw.
‘Ugh.’
Flesh-colored skin poked out from between my claws.
A human finger was embedded there, small but unmistakable.
Mimicry was starting to unravel.
There were not few people around.
I could feel eyes on me constantly.
Most just thought, “Oh, a cat,” and moved on, but the moment someone spotted a finger, I was finished.
I could not hesitate. I had to move fast.
Thud-thud-thud!
I sprinted like mad.
I cut through alleys and dashed across crosswalks without thinking.
“W-what was that?”
“A cat?”
Startled voices burst out behind me.
I was already charging toward the officetel building I had spotted.
‘Please……!’
My front paws were growing blunter.
I could feel my fur thinning as well.
But it was still barely safe. Just barely.
I squeezed out every last bit of strength I had left and hurled myself at the underground wall of the officetel.
The secret passage Jack had told me about in advance.
Clack-!
I slipped inside, into a dark machine room.
Flash-!
[Mimicry is being deactivated.]
My now-enlarged body slammed onto the floor.
My field of vision widened instantly as colors returned.
The hand bracing against the ground was human again.
“Huff, huff…….”
If a cat had suddenly turned into a human in the middle of the street, it would have been utter chaos.
For now, I was alive.
Relief flooded in all at once, and I let out a long breath.
“……Fourteenth floor.”
The passage should connect that way.
After groping along the wall for a while, I finally found it.
‘Villains really do love secrets.’
Secret passages, passwords, disguises.
With things locked down that thoroughly, it was no wonder they kept slipping through the cracks.
I followed the path upward.
After climbing for what felt like forever, a door finally appeared.
Creeeak—
The door opened easily.
The passage connected to the wall of an officetel balcony.
“You made it? Thought you were dead. Tsk.”
Jack greeted me with nothing more than a tilt of his head, sprawled across the living room sofa.
He had removed his Human Skin Mask and returned to his original appearance, casually cracking open a can of cola like he was in his own bedroom.
It was hard to believe this was the same man who had been carving people up moments ago.
I collapsed into the chair beside him and likewise peeled off my face.
With a dull crack, I reverted to my original body in no time.
“You got out nicely. That Ryu Jinwoo body of yours seems pretty capable. I thought you would just get caught.”
“……There is no way I would do something that stupid.”
“No tail on you, right? It did not look like you had many options. I even went to check the Patrol station, thinking you got nabbed.”
“There was no tail.”
Of course I had stayed vigilant the entire way.
If anyone had latched onto me, I would have been the one in trouble.
And because of that, there was something I had to say.
“More importantly, I would appreciate it if you did not pull things like this next time.”
“What?”
“If you keep pushing things forward on your own like this, it is hard for me to play along.”
I had to be clear about this.
If he shoved me into Bremen jobs like that again, my academy life could collapse.
The moment I got caught, my identity would be exposed. The risk was too high.
“Tsk, say what you want. You enjoyed it too. Watching you torture that guy earlier was pretty satisfying.”
Jack clicked his tongue out of habit and tossed the words casually.
He was saying something insane.
Enjoyed it, my ass. I was just in a hurry because there was no time.
Well, maybe a tiny bit of interest sparked, but only a tiny bit. Anyway.
“Whether I enjoyed it or not, doing things unilaterally is unpleasant.”
“Tsk, are you puffing your chest out playing house with kids? If you have complaints, take them to Edward. You got dragged into this because of his suggestion anyway.”
Jack crushed the empty can and flung it aside, sinking deeper into the sofa.
A lazy silence followed. Then, suddenly, a question crossed my mind.
“You said earlier you went to the Patrol side?”
“Patrol? Yeah. I thought you might have gotten caught.”
“What time?”
At my abrupt question, Jack frowned.
“What?”
“The time you visited Patrol. What time was it? Exactly.”
Jack wrinkled his nose like I was being dramatic, then looked up at the ceiling, digging through his memory.
“Let us see. That was ten minutes ago, so…… around 5:40 p.m., I guess. You were not there, so I just came back. Why?”
5:40 p.m.
The moment I heard that number, chills ran down the back of my neck.
“No reason. Just curious.”
I replied, forcing a calm tone.
Jack shrugged like it was nonsense and pulled out a cigarette.
But inside, I was anything but calm.
‘……It matches.’
The memory resurfaced vividly.
The article I had seen when Reporter’s Sense activated in the pet shop basement.
[At approximately 5:50 p.m., an unidentified accomplice assaulted the detention center in an attempt to rescue the individual. During the clash, CCTV footage captured the suspect’s Human Skin Mask being torn away……]
It lined up perfectly.
If Jack arrived at the Patrol station at 5:40 to assess the situation and concluded I was detained, he would have prepared and launched the assault at 5:50.
In other words, if I had been caught by Patrol, that catastrophe would have been my fate.
‘So the future changed.’
In the end, I escaped safely in cat form, and Jack returned without attacking Patrol.
The first feeling was relief.
Then, immediately, a new question followed.
‘……Reporter’s Sense got absurdly stronger. Is this because of Awakening?’
Originally, Reporter’s Sense was an intuition- and information-type passive that “smelled” incidents.
In the game, it manifested as related coverage quests, and that still held true in reality. I had already received several such quests.
But now it was showing articles from an unconfirmed future.
That went far beyond expectations.
‘Why, though?’
I glanced at Jack.
He was blowing smoke toward the ceiling.
I had plenty of room to check. I looked at the Mimic.
Shrrrk—!
Reading my intent, the Mimic flipped its pages with a loud rustle.
Countless skills and data passed by, and the entry I wanted appeared.
[Tactical Manual]
[Special Class – Reporter]
I immediately scanned my skill list.
At the very top sat the passive ‘Reporter’s Sense.’
‘This is…….’
Next to the familiar icon, an unfamiliar symbol was blinking red.
A small black rose wrapped in crimson light. A mark I recognized.
‘MacGuffin.’
I carefully selected the symbol.
Hidden details surfaced like annotations.
DING-!
[Awakening: Laplace’s Sense]
* You have contacted the ‘Ruler of Information’ and completed commissions, acquiring an immense quantity of information power. Reporter’s Sense has ascended in rank.
‘So this was the Reporter class Awakening trigger.’
Only then did it click.
The word MacGuffin written in the system window.
The moment I read it, a piece of in-game lore surfaced.
‘Right, there was something like that.’
In this game, each class had its own growth method.
Swordsmen and fighters gained physical experience through combat and training.
Magic users grew primarily through mental discipline.
Phantasmal Beast Summoners relied heavily on bonding with animals.
And special classes followed entirely different rules.
For information-based classes like Reporter, “information itself” was the growth vector.
Raising a reporter’s rank required writing countless articles and directly processing information.
‘In that sense, what happened before…….’
I retraced my steps.
I had come face to face with MacGuffin, effectively the apex of information in this world.
More than that, I had accepted MacGuffin’s commission and worked as a Cleaner, processing underworld data.
‘Meaning, without realizing it, I had undergone massive growth.’
MacGuffin, a giant of the virtual world.
Contacting that colossal mass of information had acted as an explosive experience event for my class.
When information power reached a certain threshold, it analyzed phenomena and derived future outcomes.
The system implemented that as [Future Prediction News].
‘……There are still unstable parts.’
I did not know the exact activation conditions or the cooldown.
But one thing was certain.
It was insanely useful.
It had already saved me from a major crisis once.
“Hey. Why are you staring into space like an idiot?”
I snapped back to reality after blankly gazing at the Tactical Manual window.
Jack was sitting up, watching me.
“Just thinking.”
“Tsk, turning into a kid made you sentimental, huh?”
“……What?”
“We should go eat. Let us head out.”
“You already ate a Demonic Beast.”
Jack’s stomach hid a ridiculous amount of space.
The image of him swallowing the Lycan was still vivid.
What he had stayed behind to do was reclaim the Demonic Beasts the pet shop crew had siphoned off and deal with the boss.
Of course, he had not actually digested them. They were probably intact in his internal subspace.
“That stomach and this stomach are different. Anyway, right now I am Ryu Jeongyeol. Got to feed my nephew.”
“……That is creepy.”
“Tsk, then starve.”
“I feel like steak, Uncle.”
“……That is even creepier.”
Checking Reporter’s Sense’s upgraded version, the stats and swiftness gained as repayment for saving the Silver Wolf.
‘It was nerve-wracking, but I came out ahead.’
My identity had not been exposed.
Of course, I would have to double-check tomorrow.
I needed to log into MacGuffin World and verify everything thoroughly.
Any trace left behind was unacceptable when living a double life.
“Oh, right. That room is yours.”
As we finished getting ready to leave, Jack suddenly said something absurd.
“What?”
“That room. It is yours.”
“What?”
“Tsk, did you go deaf? That is your room.”
Why would I have a room here? In this officetel? Is this not a criminal hideout?
I looked at Jack with a deeply furrowed brow.
“I am your uncle, remember? This is ‘Ryu Jeongyeol’s’ place. From now on, when you go out, stay over, or during vacations, you live here.”
“Ah.”
“The academy must be suffocating, right? If it were me, I would have killed a few people and gotten expelled by now. You are holding out surprisingly well.”
“…….”
So this place was my new home?
I was supposed to stay here during vacations?
‘Final exams are next month.’
Which meant break was not far off.
In other words, I would be living here in a month.
Then what? Getting dragged into Bremen commissions like today?
“I am heading out. Turn off the lights and come.”
After dropping that bombshell, Jack hummed to himself and left first.
I stood frozen in the entryway for a long while.
It felt like a serious red warning light had just switched on for my once-peaceful future.